Monday, April 16, 2007
What have you learnt about the media in the way they present what is perceived over what is real? (Based on the article "Spilling blood with oil in Iraq" –6april2003)
Media exists in many different forms-newspapers, magazines, television, radios etc. It is the means of communication, which reach or influence people widely and hence it has the obligation to update us daily with the world’s happenings. But has it ever come across your mind that the information we received may not be totally factual? Have we ever doubted the credibility of the media?
With the encouragement for the freedom of speech and with their powerful command of English Language, I am sorry to say that today’s media frequently weave creative stories and present to us what they perceived over what is real. The information we received are only a part of the truth but when we zoom out our lens to take a look at the whole picture, we will often realize that we are misled by our innovating media.
Pressure from the government may be the best explanation for the actions of the media. The media is used as a tool by the government for propaganda purposes and the government will definitely not tolerate scandals or news that are of disadvantage to them. Eventually, it is understandable that media will only broadcast the glory of the government and make obscure reports on the mistakes made by government. With reference to the article "Spilling blood with oil in Iraq", my above stand is strongly supported.
As far as everyone knows, the Iraq war has sparked off as USA argued that Iraq is producing weapons of mass destruction. However, none of the arguments for war was substantiated from the start. Has any weapons of mass destruction been found till this stage? The answer is no. So why does people still has the strong belief of the existence of such weapons? The phrase-"
creative untruths" is used in the article to describe the news given to us by the reporters. From only two simple words, we can infer that media is not always trustworthy. They can lie. As quoted from the article, "Many Iraqi civilians have been
crippled,
traumatized and
killed in 12 years of war", we can see that the usage of these words in bold have aroused our strong feelings towards the real situation in Iraq. We can eventually see the whole picture of this cruel reality through inference from these words- USA’s real motive of the Iraq war is to have full control of Iraqi oil But how many are actually aware of this true story? I believe only the minority does.
To put it nicely, the media may have their restrictions or obligations to report a certain piece of information to the world and thus it is dependent on individuals whether or not to trust them in wholesale.
However, I personally feel that we should widen our scope and not just narrow our source of education to one. Only then, we will be able to look at things from different perspectives and eventually find logic to it.
the world will turn WILD.
8:15 AM
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